Saturday Night Live: Anna Faris blends right in

First order of business: NBC, we need to talk about your timeliness with the Saturday Night Live promo pictures. Whomever it is that uploads the pictures onto your site can’t handle the late hours and stay up to post them immediately after the show apparently, nor can they seem to roll out of bed in the morning TO DO THEIR JOB. Seriously, 12 hours after the episode has aired and still no pictures up? Uncool. If you want us to talk about your show, and I assume you want us to talk about your show, you need to make it easy for us to talk about your show. Fire the deadweight and hire someone who can handle the VERY COMPLICATED JOB of uploading pictures onto a website. Like an unemployed toddler. Or a chimp.

UPDATE: Apparently, NBC’s uploader marmoset woke up and did its job. Finally. FASTER ON THE UPTAKE, NBC. THANKS.

Now. Anna Faris. Anna Faris was a curious host last night because she seemed to just blend seamlessly into the cast. In many sketches I literally had to spend a moment or two figuring out which one was Anna Faris. On the one hand, this is a compliment to her comedic skills — she is as good as any of the SNL cast, and would fit right in if the well of horror spoofs or terrible romantic comedies that no one wants to see runs dry. On the other hand, as an actor, a movie actor at that, shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, different than the cast of a sketch comedy show? Shouldn’t you stand out in some way? Be sparklier or funnier or even very very terrible? But most of all, shouldn’t you not blend in and be generally unremarkable and somewhat forgettable?

As for how funny last night’s episode was, I don’t know. The Weekend Update was flat-out terrible; the GOP debate sketch, while somewhat funny was undermined by Vanessa Bayer’s complete inability to read cue cards; the closing sketch with the Ferrari calendar and Kristin Wiig and Anna Faris just yelling out various body parts was intolerable; and I can’t tell if that sketch where the women sang about all the contradictions women face while dating was a scathing feminist commentary on our culture, or if it was written by the world’s foremost misogynist. MYSTERY.

But there were some highlights:

The Lifetime Television Original Game Show: “What’s Wrong With Tanya,” was genius:

The J-Pop sketch was funny enough, but it was also an interesting bit of meta comedy. When the sketch began, I didn’t think it was funny, just profoundly racist that these white kids were doing whatever the Asian equivalent of blackface is. But that’s the twist! The joke is the characters’ casual racism, thus allowing the audience to laugh at them and not at broad Asian stereotypes. I wonder how many rewrites this went through, or if this was always the original concept.

Strangely, my favorite sketch of the night might have been the absurdist “Wyndemere” bit. I assume that this won’t be a popular choice, but between Paul Brittain’s utterly ridiculous little lordling, Bill Hader as the wild-eyed footman and Jason Sudiekis’ overly enthusiastic father, it worked for me.

FINALLY A DIGITAL SHORT WORTH MENTIONING. I did not care one bit for Drake and Jay Pharoah’s stupid song about stealing Halloween candy from children in The Weekend Update. This ridiculous collection of different interviews with Drake, however, this worked. More of this, Samberg, less of Stomp parodies and dumb penis jokes. Smart penis jokes are always welcome.